Sustainable working lives: Managing work transitions and health throughout the life course

Chapter

6

Pagination

87-105

Publisher

Springer

Place Published

New York, NY

ISBN Number

978-94-017-9797-9

Résumé

Organizational transitions represent particularly important challenges for both employees and employers. The present chapter summarizes and contextualizes the demands and outcomes of organizational socialization processes. With respect to socialization outcomes, we differentiate between proximal and distal outcomes as well as between work-related and health-related outcomes. We embed organizational socialization and individual self-regulatory strategies in the broader life context of the individual by drawing specific attention to the family domain. The return to work after maternity leave is selected as a sample case to demonstrate how both work-related and family-related experiences and characteristics impact occupational adjustment processes in young adulthood. Finally, we make suggestions how empirical findings on the work-family interplay might be integrated into new organizational socialization programs and initiatives.

This study investigates the childbearing patterns of the descendants of immigrants in selected European countries, with a focus on ethnic minority women whose parents arrived in Europe from high-fertility countries. While the fertility levels of immigrants to Europe have been examined in the recent literature, the childbearing patterns among their descendants have received little attention. Using longitudinal data from eight European countries and applying Poisson regression models, the study shows that many descendants of immigrants exhibit first-birth levels that are similar to the ‘native’ population in their respective countries; however, first-birth levels are elevated among women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin in the UK and for those of Turkish descent in France and Belgium. Transition rates to a second child vary less across ethnic groups. Most ethnic minority women in the UK, France and Belgium show significantly higher third-birth levels than ‘natives’ in those countries. The inclusion of women’s level of education in the analysis has little effect on fertility differences across the ethnic groups. Overall, the childbearing behaviour of the descendants of immigrants falls in between the fertility pathways experienced by their parents’ generation and the respective ‘native’ populations. The analysis supports the idea that both the mainstream society and the minority subculture shape the childbearing patterns of the descendants of immigrants in Europe.

Drawing on data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), we examine the first birth behaviour of immigrants and their descendants by comparing their patterns to those of the ‘native’ population in Switzerland. Using event-history techniques, the empirical evidence shows that all second-generation immigrants (2G) have similar probabilities of becoming parents than Swiss natives, with the exception of 2G with Former Yugoslavian and Turkish origins. The latter group is more likely of becoming parents and having children at younger ages than their counterparts from Switzerland and from other origin.

Drawing on data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), we examine first union formation among immigrants and their descendants by comparing their behaviour to thatof the ‘native’ population in Switzerland. The empirical evidence shows that there are differences in the timing of union formation between immigrantsand the Swiss natives. Within the immigrant group, we also observe differences between those who arrived in Switzerland as adults and their descendants, who have been born or socialized in Switzerland from very early ages. The formation of a first union amongthe descendants of immigrants occurs later than among immigrants. This supports the adaptation (integration) hypothesis: through generations, social norms of the host country are adopted and integrated in union behaviour of individuals with a migrant background.

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the major explanatory factors of educational inequalities between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, this relation has rarely been explored in detail, taking into account educational trajectories instead of educational attainment. What is the impact of the SES of ethnic groups on educational trajectories? And by which “hidden mechanisms” SES background concretely influences the educational trajectories of youths? Based on the “Transition from education to employment” (TREE) longitudinal database in Switzerland, we propose a typology of post-compulsory educational pathways and we observe the impact of SES on the odds of taking a given path. Our analysis shows that, compared to other ethnic groups, second-generation from former-Yugoslavia, Portugal and Turkey are overrepresented in vocational and more problematic pathways mainly because of their low SES, but not exclusively. In addition, we conducted 50 biographical interviews with children of Albanian-speaking immigrants. We identified the fact that the SES effect is often nested with other negative factors related to the family, such as a precarious legal status, difficult living conditions, a lack of linguistic and social capital, etc. and related to the educational system that selects students into different tracks, constraints educational opportunities and reproduces educational inequalities.

This is a comparative study of the multiple ways of measuring dissimilarities between state sequences. For sequences describing life courses, such as family life trajectories or professional careers, the important differences between the sequences essentially concern the sequencing (the order in which successive states appear), the timing, and the duration of the spells in the successive states. Even if some distance measures underperform, it has been shown that there is no universally optimal distance index and that the choice of a measure depends on which aspect we want to focus on. This study also introduces novel ways of measuring dissimilarities that overcome the flaws in existing measures.

In most Western postindustrial societies today, the population is aging, businesses are faced with global integration, and important migration flows are taking place. Increasingly work organizations are hiring crossnational and multicultural workteams. In this situation it is important to understand the influence of certain individual and cultural characteristics on the process of professional integration. The present study explores the links between personality traits, demographic characteristics (age, sex, education, income, and nationality), work engagement, and job stress. The sample consisted of 618 persons, including 394 Swiss workers (200 women, 194 men) and 224 foreigners living and working in Switzerland (117 women, 107 men). Each participant completed the NEO-FFI, the UWES, and the GWSS questionnaires. Our results show an interaction between age and nationality with respect to work engagement and general job stress. The levels of work engagement and job stress appear to increase with age among national workers, whereas they decrease among foreign workers. In addition, work engagement was negatively associated with Neuroticism and positively associated with the other four personality dimensions. Finally, job stress was positively associated with Neuroticism and Conscientiousness, and negatively associated with Extraversion. However, the strength of these relationships appeared to vary according to the worker’s nationality, age, sex, education, and income.